Re: The Greatest Punch Wizard
#3 by Gotas - Feb 23 2020
Alright, you inspired me.
http://yearbook.spikycaterpillar.com/?c=h328338
Bob likes the gym. He only likes the gym. Any time he could choose gym as an activity, he did. No studying magic, no getting smart, no sleeping (he makes up for it by having lunch at the mall every weekend). I'm not sure what Ellen sees in him, and Grabiner is totally right to say "I cannot imagine what purpose you find in attending a school of magic and not troubling yourself to
study it." Somehow, Bob's grades are surprisingly decent.
It turns out that even without ever gaining a single point of smarts or taking a single magic class outside the breadth requirement for first week, you can still make it through every exam except for the third one. And the only times you need spells are for the first exam and from your hallmates on the final. Unfortunately, Potsdam refuses to count a bunch of your successes because she thinks you're supposed to use spells or something. At least you get an achievement for it.
Summary of my strategies.
Exam 1:
You're very limited in what you can do in the dark, so I don't see any way out of this without casting spells twice. If you don't want to have more magic on your hands than necessary, you can wander in the dark until you touch vines, then cast a single light spell, followed by inspection to learn about the secret button.
Exam 2:
If you've spent all your time in the gym you easily have the 41 HP you need to just tank the gas twice.
Exam 3:
There doesn't seem to be any way you can cross the pit, and while inspection let's you find the teleport circle, you don't have any spell that let's you use it. This seems to be the one exam that a student who never studies magic cannot pass. Which is very ironic, because it's the one exam that Ellen passes without using magic. (I tried examining the teleport circle like 20 times in a row to see if there's a way to brute force it like she did, but that doesn't seem to be an option)
Exam 4:
This one is pretty straightforward. Open the gates with the switches, wander through the darkness, tank all the monster's hits with your massive HP.
Exam 5:
This was the most hilarious one to play, and I was a little worried that my HP wouldn't be enough. With no investment in smarts, and no communication spell, you're too dumb to befriend the dog, so you just have to walk across the lave, taking damage both ways, tank the lightning damage from the trap, and then tank the hits from the ghost dog on your way back. With maxed out HP, however, you actually can do all that (who knew that going to the gym let you walk on lava and get struck by lightning).
Exam 6:
I believe that this one requires getting lucky (or savescumming like me), because if the toad gets lucky and finds the cup the first path he checks you'll never catch him. Basically I just wandered around until I found the gate, then camped there and waited for the frog to open it for me, then ran through and won.
Exam 7:
With 20 MP and 100 HP you just shrug off the purple trap. My experience was that if I just opened the gate, the Mothmen would move into the tile between the two of them and then get at least three hits each in on the red monkey and kill him. I think that if you were lucky enough you could just get damage rolls where he tanks all the hits. What I ended up doing instead, though, was intentionally waking the mothmen up so that they would move into the tile directly in front of the gate and only get two chance to hit the monkey before deciding that I was a more convenient target. With maxed out HP, you can easily tank them both until the little guy makes it back to his friends.
For some reason, Potsdam still gives you merits for passing this exam, even if you never cast a spell. I guess that's maybe because the point of this test was somewhat the downsides of your magic abilities?
Final Exam:
Interestingly, the biggest danger I found here is that the jelly drops you bellow 10 MP, preventing you from activating the crystal (when you only have 20 MP, it doesn't take much even if you're not casting spells). You can use Luke's track scent to try to make sure you don't run into the Hodag, then once you find the jelly, case Truesight, followed by Poison and Teleport other. Move him far enough away that by the time you get there he's already dead from poison). This way the jelly gets three hits on you (one when you first meet him, one while you're casting Truesight, and one while you're poisoning/teleporting him). As long as all three don't hit you, you're probably okay. You could reduce him to two hits by having Donald cast Truesight every step, just in case the jelly is there, but then there's a risk of Donald running out of MP. (although I haven't actually tested what the range on Track Scent is. Maybe you can predict exactly where the jelly will be?).
So yeah, in summary, with a little bit of luck, you can complete 75% of the exams without every casting a spell.
). Apparently the effect is just that when you try to turn, you end up facing in a random direction (which explains how I was always able to walk right through the exam 7 darkness). That means you have a 50% chance of getting through the exam 4 darkness without accidentally backtracking, and if you do, then the blade beast doesn't catch up to you until you flip the switch for the final gate, at which point you're only two spaces away from the exit, so he doesn't have time to kill you before you get out, even at base HP.
